Burgess opens up on his year of frustration

IT was something George Burgess had never experienced before, and it frustrated him.

The South Sydney star was in the midst of his first season dogged by injury and it ended up limiting him to 17 appearances - the lowest since a handful of games in his debut season in 2012.

Even when he was able to play, he produced nothing like the impact fans had come to expect from the bombarding Brit.

The most challenging period of his career began when he needed to undergo hip surgery at the end of 2015.

"I needed to get hip cartilage repaired. I had a labrum hip tear for a number of years so I had that fixed and a lot of stuff cleaned out, early arthritis and all that stuff," Burgess said.

"It takes a while to adjust to, and recovery from surgery like that can take up to 18 months. I'm starting to feel the effects now, it's a learning process."

Then midway through the season, his groin muscle failed him, so he needed to go under the knife again and subsequently missed two months of football.

"I had the other surgery during the year as a result of compensating for the other injury for so long," Burgess says.

"When you're dealing with an injury for a while, your body starts to overcompensate in other areas so when you go and fix it, you get other problems because of it.

"I'd never had surgeries before that, so that was a first for me in terms of dealing with that and the recovery process.

"It's tough for any athlete. A lot of it's mental."

Burgess burst on to the scene in 2013 and was named Dally M rookie of the year. He continued that rich vein of form into the following season when he helped the Rabbitohs end their 43-year premiership drought.